This will probably be uncomfortable for all of us.

From 2009 to 2013, the research schooner Tara traversed the globe, carrying a multinational team of scientists. They surveyed the critical foundation of the marine food chain (a foundation we know dangerously little about): plankton, bacteria, protists, viruses and small animals. All in all, they found more 35,000 different kinds of organisms — many of them previously unknown to science. Read all about it!

Top photo: Tara in the Arctic Ocean (A.Deniaud/Tara Expéditions)

Photo 2: Plankton collected in the Pacific Ocean. (Christian Sardet/CNRS/Tara Expéditions)

Photo 3: A male Sapphirina copepod collected in the Mediterranean sea. (Christian Sardet/CNRS/Sharif Mirshak/Parafilms/Tara Expéditions)

Photo 4: A tiny crustacean copepod, a spider crab larva, an amphipod, a baby squid, a Phronima amphipod, and an Atlantic pteropod mollusc. (Christian Sardet/CNRS/Tara Expéditions)

Photo 5: A small medusa (a relative of the jellyfish) collected in the Mediterranean sea. (bepoles/Tara Expéditions)

Sunbittern (Eurypyga helias), DARING YOU, JUST FUCKIN DARING YOU TO TRY SOME OF THIS!!!, family Eurypygidae, order Eurypygiformes, Costa Rica

This bird is the only member of its family.

Its closest living relative is the Kagu of New Caldeonia.

I love that this gomie straight up had FOUR other versions of the joke.

Like, back to back, homie could not wait